The crazy story of ZSC top scorer Rudolfs Balcers (26): His career got started thanks to a fisherman

Rudolfs Balcers and Maksims Ponomarenko (26). These are the names of the two friends who grew up together and played hockey in Liepaja, a port city on the Baltic Sea in western Latvia. The teenagers had little prospect of becoming professional footballers in their home country, “it was a difficult situation,” says Balcers.

Ponomarenko’s father worked as a fisherman in Norway at the time and told the boys that there were clubs with good youth sections. The two juniors quickly asked Lorenskog if there was an opportunity for them to play there. Club’s suggestion: In 2011, Lorenskog’s U14 team took part in the famous Riga Hockey Cup, a major youth tournament. Balcers and Ponomarenko were allowed to play for them on a trial basis. The duo apparently left a lasting impression.

Shortly afterwards, the two teenagers packed up and moved to Norway. “We first lived with a team leader until Max’s family came,” Balcers remembers. “We were so young, we thought it would be a cool adventure.” His own parents also emigrated to Norway to pursue his hockey dream.

Surprised by the design

Balcers spent just two seasons in Oslo with Lorenskog before moving to Stavanger, the country’s most famous club. At the age of 17, he made his debut with the Oilers in the Eliteserien and played two games. A year later, almost the entire season, the Latvian teenager became a hockey professional within four years. While Ponomarenko still plays in Norway today, his friend Balcers’ career took a different direction.

The design. This chapter of his story still leaves the winger shaking his head in disbelief. “I still don’t know how the scouts even noticed me,” he says, but probably at the U18 World Cup. The outspoken Balcers doesn’t use this platitude to say that the NHL has always been his dream. “Of course I watched NHL games, but yes, I played in Norway.” Not many NHL players have been discovered there yet.

That’s why the phone call in the summer of 2015 came as a total surprise to him. “I was on holiday in Spain with my friend Ingrid and her family when my mobile phone rang and I saw the number from a country I have never received a call from before.” On the line: the general manager of the San Jose Sharks, proudly announcing he was drafted in the fifth round. Balcers interrupted his vacation and traveled to North America.

The disadvantage of the NHL

But the sympathetic Latvia also learned the downside of the glamorous NHL. Dealing with him cost him a lot of effort. ‘The past few years have been tough. It just felt like a business.” After a season in the AHL with the San Jose Barracuda and a good camp with the Sharks, he was told on the phone that he had to move to Ottawa (51 games) as part of the big Erik Karlsson trade. ‘That was a shock. I heard a lot about trades, but I didn’t think it would affect me.”

The Sharks (102 games) brought him back in 2021, but placed him on waivers after his best season, where the Florida Panthers picked him up in 2022. Last season he only had one good thing: “The bronze medal at the World Cup with Latvia. My highlight in my career.”

But there was also something positive about his trip to Ottawa. There he played under Marc Crawford (62), who was first an assistant and then head coach of the Senators in 2019. And today his coach is in Zurich and the main reason is that he ended up at the ZSC Lions. Balcers has already found his niche here. “I am happy with my performance.” But? “I still have so much potential.”